“Government threw a sop to military pensioners instead of solving the actual problem” – Roman Semenukha

23.02.2018

Commenting on the government’s decision to recalculate and increase military pensions by an average of 1.5 thousand hryvnias without the corresponding legislative changes, the people’s deputy representing Samopomich Union, Roman Semenukha, accentuates: “The Cabinet once again failed to fulfill its obligations. Obviously, this is done to calm down the unions that started their protests last year. Consequently, there is a number of questions regarding this decision.

Roman Semenukha continues, “First of all, why did not the government recalculate people’s pensions at least for the fourth quarter of the last year as it was done in relation to other categories? Are the military pensioners better or worse than other pensioners? Secondly, why one and a half thousand hryvnias?”

The MP speaks about the background of the whole story when the amendments to the pension legislation adopted by the Verkhovna Rada last year did not concern the category of military pensioners. With regard to them, the government was obliged to have a separate law that would unify and modernize pensions adopted in the Verkhovna Rada. However, as of the end of February, the Cabinet of Ministers has not even registered any law like this. “This means that the Cabinet of Ministers has failed its work once again,” Roman Semenukha underlines. “In the countries with developed state institutions, for example in the US, there is a rigid principle, which is called “power of the purse”. This means that without parliament, the Cabinet has no right to dispose of a single cent. Meanwhile, our Cabinet of Ministers having failed its homework on elaboration of a new law on military pensioners is throwing a sop to people, so as to calm them down a little.”

The MP says that the Samopomich faction is convinced that it is wrong to do things like this without parliament. He explains, “The Verkhovna Rada must exercise control in order to understand the logic and correctness of such steps. Secondly, where is the bill, Mr. Hroisman?

Thirdly, when discussing the budget for 2018, Samopomich deputies repeatedly drew attention to the fact that sometimes non-realistic macroeconomic indicators were taken into account. The modernization of pensions in the fourth quarter alone cost not 12 billion hryvnias, as it had been planned, but more than twenty. In other words, the Finance Ministry has simply made incorrect calculations. This is why in January the Pension Fund of Ukraine had to ask for a loan of several billion hryvnias, which means another miscalculation had been made.”

Thus, according to Roman Semenukha, taking into account the situation with military pensioners, one can predict that the Cabinet will not be able to understand and calculate the real deficit of the Pension Fund.

He concludes, “As a matter of fact, it is not clear whether the government controls the situation with pensions and this deficit, because the figures worth of billions of hryvnias uncontrollably go up and down. I think the parliament must immediately take control of this situation, because it is unacceptable when the government, at its discretion, spends taxpayers’ money without introducing a systemic law on military pensioners.”